CBS Evening News

Jackson's Injury Claims A Sham?

After all this time, Michael Jackson still has the power to shock and fascinate.

In his first interview since being charged with child molestation, Jackson told interviewer Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes that he still sees nothing wrong sleeping with other people's children, reports CBS News Correspondent Bill Whitaker.

"Why not?" Jackson said. "If you're gonna be a pedophile, if you're gonna be Jack the Ripper, if you're gonna be a murderer, it's not a good idea. That, I'm not."

Jackson called the allegations of child molestation "totally false."

"Before I would hurt a child, I would slit my wrist," he said.

"I think the day after, we see Michael Jackson as a real person who has some real feelings, but we still have questions about what happened and who's to be believed here," said former prosecutor Laurie Levinson.

And now another blow for Jackson:

Jackson says Santa Barbara sheriff's deputies intentionally hurt him the day he was arrested and handcuffed, an allegation the department denied again today.

Yet, several doctors told CBS News the severe pain of a dislocated shoulder would have prevented Jackson from waving to spectators after his booking.

"If you dislocate your shoulder, you don't have the joint there anymore. You can't raise your shoulder, nothing to do it with. If someone forced you to do it, you'd be in a lot of pain," Dr. Samuel Fink told CBS' Whitaker.

In the interview with Bradley, Jackson demonstrated what he claimed was limited arm movement, stretching his arm and saying, "See this arm? This is as far as I can reach it. Same with this side over here."

But elsewhere in the interview, Jackson reaches up and scratches his forehead without any apparent discomfort.

"All I know is when he went there, he had no problem with his arms," said Jackson's attorney Mark Geragos. "I know that when he came out that there was the beginnings of bruising and he had a real problem later that night with the arm."

But Jackson's greater problem is a legal one and now this question: did Sunday night's performance do him more harm or good?